A Brief Chat with Greg McMillan

Dec 19, 2011

By Peter GambacciniPhoto of Brett Gotcher and Greg McMillan by Victah SailerGreg McMillan is one of the nation’s most esteemed distance coaches, and is at the helm of the McMillan Elite professional running team based in Flagstaff, Arizona. The

McMillan Elite men's squad took first place in the recent USATF National Club Cross Country Championships in Seattle. McMillan, also an exercise physiologist and Running Times contributor, will have six athletes, four men and two women, at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston on January 14. The Chat below is chiefly focused on McMillan-coached athletes who'll be at those Trials. Click Here to read an earlier Chat in which other matters, like the origins of McMillan Elite, are discussed.Let's talk about the personnel you have who are going to the Marathon Trials. Let's start with Emily Harrison. She did recently improve her marathon time by more than nine minutes. During the process between her 2:42 and her 2:32, did you perceive that potential? What did you see that you thought might turn her into a 2:32 person?Greg McMillan: We always felt that Emily had a lot of potential. And unfortunately, for the first two years that she was with our group, she really struggled with a lot of injuries that we couldn't explain. It didn't seem like it was a training issue or a strength issue or a flexibility issue. She finally found out, like a lot of people are finding out, that she had some food allergies, and those were causing most of these strange injuries. She began to alter her diet. She went into Houston, where she ran her debut in 2:42, in pretty good shape, but really lacking from those two years of interruption of training. And then after Houston, she had the diet really dialed in and we were able to get in some very good training heading into Pittsburgh, which was in May. That was going to be her second marathon, and I felt she was in mid-2:30s shape, maybe 2:34 at the fastest, probably more in the 2:36 kind of range. But she had a little tweak in her hamstring, and that kind of ruined that race for her (Harrison didn't finish, stopping at around 15 miles).But she knew that her training was going very well. We just sort of took that training that she did for Houston and Pittsburgh, she got healthy, and we had a great summer of training leading into Twin Cities. So I feel like that performance improvement came through two marathons, it just looks like a bigger jump than she did.What were her food allergies? Is this another celiac case?GM: I'm not sure if she had celiac. It's certainly a gluten intolerance, as well as dairy. Those are the things she has to be careful about, and as a result, she's been 100 percent healthy. It's a tricky thing, but once you figure it out, it can really help your running.It requires a lot of discipline, particularly when they travel. I really respect the athletes who have food allergies, because going to a race, they have to plan. Luckily, we have several people who have food allergies so they've really learned to travel well.Stephanie Rothstein, who does have celiac disease, has her one impressive marathon performance, a 2:29. She's had some problems after that but has had some good results lately (at shorter distances). Do you have any concern that she hasn't yet had the opportunity to follow up that 2:29?GM: No. Her training is very good right now. We're following pretty much the exact same schedule we had for Houston (in January of this year), and she's at least where she was before Houston. So I have no reason to think she won't be prepared for the (Trials) race. She certainly did have an injury in the spring. We wanted to go to the track, we wanted to get faster, we wanted to do all those things. She didn't get that. But the marathon is really her forte, so she has really come back with a vengeance over the last month and is really kind of feeling that groove again. I feel optimistic that she'll be ready for the Trials in the same way she was for Houston last time.I've talked to a lot of these runners, and they're all pretty bright, but she's really smart. What are the challenges and the pleasures of working with an athlete who's that intelligent? GM: The pleasure, of course, is that they take it seriously, that they do treat it as a job, they do treat it as a profession. They know that their time is short, that they can't do this for 40 years. And so the way they approach their entire life is all set up to help their running, and that's really great, because most people who don't succeed often don't take running as seriously. They'll say they will, but they won't. When you're around people like Stephanie, you realize, "No, not everybody will take it this seriously." They won't do absolutely everything they need to do to make sure they're getting better.The challenge, of course, is that they (the intelligent athletes) are not just dumb jocks. You can't just say, "Do this, and shut up and leave me alone." You're really involved with that athlete in helping them understand why they're doing everything, helping them through workouts and races that may not have gone as well. There are some athletes, you just tell them what to do and you don't have to worry about it. But people like Stephanie really enjoy knowing, and if you recognize that as a coach, you want to feed that, because the more that athlete knows, the more they believe. And the more they believe, the more likely they're going to have success.Nick Arciniaga has blogged about some of the recent problems he's had. He's back to training pretty well right now. Are you pretty convinced that there's enough time for him to be ready on January 14?GM: Yeah, what we've seen is he's run 2:11 twice since joining our group, and both training segments have been very very short. He's the athlete and he feels in a bigger rush than I do, but I always feel like we've seen that he can get in very good shape pretty quickly. It kind of stinks that he didn't have the World Championships race that he wanted and he sort of suffered after because he ran on that bum leg through the race, but now he's 100 percent. To me, an athlete feeling urgency to get ready for the Trials is a good thing. We're basically one month out from the Trials. If you're feeling good right now, I think that's a bad thing. So I like the athletes who feel like, "Holy crap, I only have 30 days left," because then I know that every day is very serious to them as to "I've got to do everything right, I've got to get prepared." That's a good scenario for us.And Nick's consistency must be very reassuring to you, that he's not a one-hit wonder.GM: He's not. He's a great athlete. He's certainly the poster boy for "just do the work, over year after year after year, and slowly you'll move up through the pack." And now he's put himself in a position where he's ranked sixth on the depth chart going into the Trials. So it wouldn't take a miracle race for him to make the team, it would just take a good race for him to do that. What I always say about Nick is he knows how to manage his body, he knows how to manage his effort to make sure he accomplishes whatever his goal is.Do you think you and Brett Gotcher have learned after his one very good marathon what went wrong with his less satisfying follow-up and have remedied that and have put him back on the course of being a 2:10 marathoner?GM: Oh sure. Brett is as good as he's ever been. Most of us have more than one poor race in the marathon, so for him to have one sort of downer race is not a big deal. A lot of people have focused on, "Oh gosh, he ran 2:19 in Houston after running 2:10, what's happened?" Well, he ran another marathon. If he ran ten of them, he probably would have some that would go as well as the 2:10 and some that may not. That's the normal course for marathoners, particularly for marathoners who are really pushing the edge, who are really going for it. And Brett has always been that way. If you looked at him coming out of high school, coming out of college, he should not have those high goals. He should have had lower goals, he should have said, "I want to start at 2:15 and then maybe try to run 2:13 and maybe one day get to 2:10." That was not the way he approached, he approached it that, "I came here to be better than I think I can be, I want to go for it, I want to try to run at the very maximum of what's possible." And if you live in that zone, you are going to have some failures. Now if he wanted to run comfortable, he could easily go out and run 2:12 to 2:15 and that wouldn't be as risky. But that's not what his mindset is.Jordan Horn and Danny Mercado got into the Trials via the half-marathon. We don't know as much about them. What can you expect from them at the Marathon Trials?GM: They're at opposite ends of the spectrum. Jordan Horn is one of our original athletes. He's been here for four years. He is by far our most improved athlete. He went from 14:11 in college (for 5000 meters) to 13:31 (now). He broke 4:00 in the mile. This is a guy who was not good in high school, was not good in college, so he definitely made those big jumps. But we realize that even running 13:31, that's great, but today that doesn't get it done in the 5k or even the equivalent performance at 10k. Obviously, he's getting older. It's time for him to move up to the roads and the marathon. Houston, the Trials, will be his debut marathon, and so we don't know for sure. He certainly has a lot of good leg speed and we'll see if he can carry that over into the marathon.Danny Mercado is the opposite end of the spectrum. He is brand new to our program. He only came this fall. He graduated from the University of Oregon in the spring. Originally, he was only supposed to be the pacer for Jordan Horn in that half-marathon (the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Half Marathon from Virginia to Maryland). But it became very clear in the training that Danny was in very good shape and he could run a good half. So he had the green light that "you can run the whole thing. Race it. You guys work together, but man versus man over the last 5k." And as a result, he ran a solid race, just over 64 minutes, which qualified him for the Trials. And then we sat down and talked and he really wants to do the Trials. He feels he's a long distance runner, he wants to go ahead and make that jump to longer road races and the marathon, so I'm excited for him. It's a great opportunity for somebody just out of college to get into the Trials in 2012 with no pressure. He's thinking, "Have a good race, experience the Trials, and get ready for 2016."Congratulations on your team's victory at USATF Club Cross Country. Aaron Braun was second, individually. Where does he fit in the Olympic year? Is he going to be trying for the 10,000 or the 5000?GM: Obviously, Aaron's a very special young man, and he's had a wonderful first year out of college. And he's had a lot of life changes during that time, too, with getting married and having a kid. He will focus on the 10,000 for the Olympic Trials (on the track). Everything that we're doing this fall as well as this winter is to help him build toward the track season. Aaron has been second a lot (he was also second in the Dash to the Finish Line 5K in New York on November 5) and it's really been fueling his fire to try to make it to the next level. I will be honest; he's raced some of these races compromised because he just became a father (in early October). Anybody who has children knows that the first two or three months, you don't get a lot of sleep. You have a lot of stress. He's racer, he loves to race, so we race. But he had to go into those a little bit compromised from where he'd like to be.McMillan Elite is a team, but it's comprised of individuals. Are you keeping Emily and Stephanie on the same schedule, and Nick and Brett on the same schedule, or do you make adjustments for each particular person?GM: (Laughs). Unfortunately, I make adjustments for each particular person. My life would be easier if we all did the same program. Each individual athlete is slightly different, and so while the majority of the training is the same. But some of the workouts can be different for the athletes, based on their physiology and their psychology. Everything's going to be individualized. We work as a team and that team can help you, but you have some nuances in training that hopefully let you take advantage of your particular strengths.Can you specifically mention what's different between Emily Harrison and Stephanie Rothstein, as far as the training goes?GM: Sure. Emily is what I would call a fast trainer. Almost all of her runs are pretty quick and her workouts are at a very high level. And Stephanie is what I would call a slow trainer. She has to keep the training at 80 percent as opposed to 90 percent, which is what most athletes do--certainly not 100 percent, which is the way to get injured. So Stephanie has to hold back a lot more in training, whereas Emily can push a little bit more. And that's important to know, and they have to know that about each other. Because if they are doing the same workout, they have to know it's okay if Emily's ahead of Stephanie at this point or if Stephanie does something different. We talk about that so everybody knows that, "I train this way, you train that way, it's okay."You're picking a team of people you consider promising based on results, mainly in college, that are often only semi-promising. Can you say something about what makes you think that these particular people you select will thrive in your program?GM: Talent identification is the most difficult thing in all of life. Business leaders face it, athletic people face it, it doesn't matter the sport. How can you actually know if an athlete's going to be good? Because we've all seen athletes in high school who have way more talent and they amount to nothing. Same in college. So what you try to do is find people who you think will mesh well with your system of training and who have, at some point in their past, shown some ability, some goal-oriented driven past. Whether that's in high school they won state titles or in college they were all-American, they somehow could wrap their head around accomplishing a goal.You try to give those people an opportunity and see if they can take it to the next level. Now we need to admit that most don't, that most will not. But there's nothing wrong with trying and failing. That's okay. And with all the training groups that are available now, there's plenty of opportunity to young people who want to give it a go and see if they can make it. And then what's interesting is how do they take to the actual opportunity? Are they willing to change themselves--because something was wrong, otherwise they'd already have been good. Sometimes it's just opportunities that were available, but most of the time it's a mental shift to believe in themselves more. And you can look at a guy like Aaron Braun. Why is he running better than so many NCAA Division I stars? He stepped out and immediately shows no fear of trying to beat these people. Most of us would say, "Give it three or four years," but he's not that way.So you just don't know. You just hope you can provide an environment they can excel in. I think one thing that has to change in the emerging elite world is that athletes need to figure out that they're in charge of their careers and they're probably the ones who are going to make a difference, and when they choose a coach or training group, they need to really take responsibility for their involvement in that. And if it's a bad fit, which it can be, they need to just step up and say, "I recognize it and I'm going to find a different scenario." There has to be more of that, "This was good, I gave it an honest shot, now I'll move on." Instead, you see people stay a little too long and get frustrated. They blame the system, when really they're just in the wrong system.If we go by the form charts, the runners you're sending to the Marathon Trials are not in the top three right now, but may be in the top six or eight. There needs to be a little bit of an upset for them to make it. That would require a combination of them steeping a bit while some highly established folks don't have their best day, right?GM: Sure. And if you look at the Olympic Games, Olympic Trials, World Championships, the favorites don't always succeed. And I think anybody who's not a favorite, that's what they fall back on. And athletes like a lot of ours wouldn't have to have a miracle day to make the team, they'd just have to have a very good day and maybe some other people would have to have a less-good day. Then that's the way you're thinking, "I've got to give myself a shot here." That's a good scenario. It's very rare that the 1-2-3 ranked people make the Olympic Team. That doesn't happen very often. But I think on both sides (men and women's), it's going to be the most competitive Olympic Trials we've ever seen or certainly that we've seen in the recent past. And with a whole bunch of people getting in on non-marathon times and debuting (in the marathon), it's just really throwing a lot into the mix. It's going to be very exciting.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.